(Photo Credit: Iceland)British grocery retailer Iceland reported reducing its overall plastic packaging usage by 29% within two years. The company previously pledged to eliminate plastic packaging from its own product line by the end of 2023.
Iceland operates more than 950 stores across the UK as well as an online shopping service. The retailer says that its goal was to slash annual plastic usage without passing the cost to customers.
Targeting high-volume ranges, like frozen meals, produced “significant wins,” the retailer said. Iceland moved 74 frozen food lines from non-recyclable black plastic to paperboard-based trays. The company also reported progress addressing difficult-to-recycle plastics such as PVC and polystyrene.
“Collaboration with suppliers has been key to the progress made to date,” the retailer said. “Iceland has engaged almost 100 own-label suppliers to establish working groups and set out frameworks for plastic removal, with a redevelopment plan set out for each and every line.”
The company collaborated with its operations employees and conducted customer research to make sure that the solutions they developed actually worked as intended. Iceland encouraged its branded suppliers to adopt a similarly collaborative approach to reduce plastic packaging.
Large-scale industry trials that Iceland launched included the UK’s first plastic-bag-free store, a reduced plastic Christmas range, and installing reverse vending machines in stores that have collected more than 1.2 million plastic bottles to date.
Richard Walker, managing director at Iceland, noted that challenges to tackling plastic waste on a large scale included a lack of alternative solutions in some instances, and manufacturing industry infrastructures built around plastic usage.
Reducing plastic packaging by 29% since the start of 2018 removed 3,794 metric tons from the retailer’s annual plastic usage, according to Iceland.
